


flight before the fall

by thedevilmakeswork



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Force Awakens - Fandom, The Last Jedi
Genre: Armitage Hux is a Jerk, First Order Poe Dameron, Gingerpilot, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, M/M, Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Psychological Torture, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 15:04:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13906554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilmakeswork/pseuds/thedevilmakeswork
Summary: In the end no one came. The Resistance has fallen, leaving Poe Dameron and what little is left of the Resistance scattered and scrambling. The First Order have an iron first, and it's one they swing with ever more precise blows.  Time has run out. Allies are no where and enemies are plenty. There's only so many places left to go when all doors are shut.  And Poe is learning that quicker than most....





	1. Chapter 1

  The destruction of the Resistance hadn’t been some heroic defeat. No war cries. No last man standing speeches on blood soaked battle fields, grappling with the enemy. No bittersweet end of _well we almost pulled it off_. Going out in a blaze of glory or righteous anger would have at least felt like something. Something worth the lives lost. Worth the pain. No. They didn’t even get a flicker, let alone a blaze. It had been a massacre. Truth be told they had barely gotten a blow in. It was like watching a skrawny knock-kneed youngling face off against a ten strong armed gang of street thugs with a stick. Poe had truly thought their allies would eventually come to their aid. Even after what happened at Crait. To stand shoulder to shoulder with them against those who would threaten their way of life...their freedom. But they hadn’t. Money and comfort speak louder then the blood of rebels. The crackling of silent radios and the endless rounds of unanswered distress calls were all that echoed through the base in those final hours. Eventually the Resistance were little more than scurrying rabbits backed into a fox hole. The boot of the First Order had come down hard and quick. A hunt more than it was a battle. Barely a scratch left on them. What was left of the Resistance had scrambled to flee once the smoke had cleared. Limping and wounded, quite literally. Bodies of their comrades at their feet. Black squadron had barely gotten out. Spreading out in an attempt to not be rounded up and sheep herded by looming and hungry TIE’s. Poe had almost turned his fighter around as he watched the few survivors still on the ground get rounded up by scores of troopers. Pava screaming in his ear over the comms was the only thing that had made him refrain from it.

              ** _You’re no use to them dead, Poe._**

She was right. He knew she was. But it made it no less of a bitter burn to swallow. Hands like lead for the first time on the controls of his starfighter. Like acid in his mouth and throat. More than just the taste of defeat. It was the taste of total annihilation. The taste of smoke and blaster residue, blood and ash. Poe's blood rushing in his ears. Heartbeat a constant thrum in under his skin. Once they had broken out of the planets obit Black Squadron jumped to lightspeed to avoid the pull of tractor beams or canon fire from the looming star destroyer. Everyone disappearing in opposite directions.

 

That had been the last time Poe had heard from any of his squadron. 

 

And that had been damn near two months of cycles ago.   


	2. Chapter two

Being Leia’s number one operative had, along with securing a decent amount of bounty money on his head - alive not dead, apparently the First Order was warming to his winning personality - granted him the ability and the skills to disappear. To blend in.

He had pulled enough missions in areas with less than savory individuals that he knew his way around a scavenger bar without his head getting blown off with a blaster. And his ability to talk a good game had helped him out of more situations then he could count ( got him **into** a few situations that he'd rather not count too).  The moment he’d dropped out of hyperspace his first port of call had been to ditch his beloved X-Wing. Pulling out data banks and wiping out flight logs and information before jumping down to the engine and ripping wires and vital hardware out as best he could with just his hands. Poe allowing himself the petty thought as his beloved fighter sparked and sputtered, that if he couldn’t fly her, at least no one else could now either. Before high tailing it out of there.

It had been harder to leave BB8. The droid bleeping madly at him in binary at first. Refusing to leave. And in truth it was the last thing Poe wanted him to do either. Not wanting to be alone in all of this. He and BB8 had been through everything together. But Poe wanted the little droid to get captured even less.  He knew what the first order would to to the little astromech this time, and Poe wouldn't be able to stop it if it happened. Eventually Poe had had to order him to power down. To power down and wait until he came back for him, because ** _I’ll be back, buddy, i promise_** …

....it was the first time he’d ever ordered BB8 to do something. The spherical droids head lowering, giving a series of sad beeps and whirrs as it rolled close to a crouched Poe, bumping an orange and white head against the pilots. Covering him over, BB8’s lights out and the constant subtle electrical hum around him now silent, it was almost like burying a friend as he tucked the droid into an underground hatch of an old rebel bunker. Heart twisting. Chest constricting.

 

By all rights, Poe should have wiped BB8’s memory clean too...just in case.

But he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

 

                                                          --------------------------------------------------------------------

 

After that there had been weeks of constant planet hoping.

Going first to deserted rebel bases and outposts, to Resistance safe houses. Trying to see who had gotten out. To make contact with the rest of Black Squadron. To Finn. To _anyone_. But no one had answered. And the few he had tracked down, Poe’d gotten there just in time to find out that they had been carted away in binders or black body bags. The First Order had started tracking and capturing the members of _‘ the terrorist group known as the Resistance ’_ , rounding them up and taking them aboard star destroyers. Executing the ones that tried to fight, on sight. With complete legality, apparently.

The turnover seemed almost numbing to Poe. The speed of it. The fluid and seamless transition with which the First Order just took control...sprang up from every corner and stabbed metaphorical flagpoles of ownership into everything. Despite the facade of Republic banners still fluttering overhead. Propaganda posters and flyers were blaring on walls like the imperial days of old his parents had told him about. Except back then the people had fought alongside the rebellion.  

The resistance weren’t so lucky. Poe couldn’t count the times in the past few weeks he’d had to back out of a bar or quickly check out of a backstreet inn because he’d seen a **_Most Wanted_** poster of himself pasted to the wall or a holo of himself projected in neat blue on a bounty hunters datapad.

It was almost flattering really.

If it wasn’t for the constant threat of death.

It was thanks to one of those monochrome propaganda flyers that had put Poe in his current predicament. The pilot tucked on the back of a small freighter after being forced into bartering a quicker passage then he'd wanted to when his cover was nearly blown - something that in itself was rapidly getting harder and harder to do. Bartering passage. The First Order had started dotting troopers and bounty hunters alike at random stops and borders to check people on board with facial and binary scanning for ‘ terrorist’ stowaways. With the backing of what was left of the New Republic security services. Apparently the blowing up of the Hosnian System and with it, the Capital of the New Republic, seemed to have slipped everyone’s mind.

So far though, Poe’s luck had kept up. For now. He felt like he was jinxing himself just by thinking about it. Flicking up the collar of his jacket out of a new formed habit when the freighter docked and jumped off. Dropping a substantial amount of his last credits into the waiting hands of the Captain. 

The only reason Poe was even in this sector was because he had gotten wind that Snaps and a few other Resistance supporters had been glimpsed here. Or rather whispered about being glimpsed here. A Zabrak bounty hunter he’d called in a favor from had finally carved out this piece of good news from him from a crew of outer rim smugglers. One of the only vastly decreasing favors he’d cashed in that had come to any fruition at all. Even then, Dameron was acutely aware this could be a neatly painted and displayed honey trap. A specifically set up trail of barely disguised breadcrumbs by the First Order to lead him into the loving embrace of a set of cold binders and the caress of the interrogation chair.

But what other choice did he have? Scurry to the ends of the galaxy and find a planet to hole up on and hide in, growing crops and a beard in hopes that no plastoid armored bucket heads come jangling his doorbell? No thanks. Not Poe’s style.

Especially not when he knew there were others still out there. Not when there was even a flickering of hope left.

Pulling the glove off of one hand with his teeth, he ran his fingers over the screen of the battered, somewhat archaic datapad he’d managed to get hold off. Pulling up and swiping through the info in Temmin Wexley’s last known location, glancing around at the area as he kept moving. Poe giving the device a rough bang and shake when the images stuck and jerked for a moment. Damn thing was probably twice as old as he was. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

Or rather, people classified as a fugitive with a bounty on their head and a trooper boot just waiting in the wings, ready to be jammed up their metaphorical ass, can’t be choosers. Besides, he’d swung with worse than this. He can work with it. Especially if there was a possibility this trail of breadcrumbs led to him finding his teammates.

And not the other possibility of a mask wearing force user or an angry space ginger waiting ready to topple him into an open oven.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Constructive criticism, kudos and comments are always loved and gratefully received with open arms. Come at me my dudes.


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